# Raul offers an olive branch to the u.s



## mr.c (Apr 8, 2004)

hope we grab on to it.... adios fidel.

_We take this opportunity to once again state that we are willing to resolve at the negotiating table the longstanding dispute between the United States and Cuba, of course, provided they accept, as we have previously said, our condition as a country that will not tolerate any blemishes on its independence, and as long as said resolution is based on the principles of equality, reciprocity, non-interference and mutual respect_

http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/fidel-no-show-raul-castro-calls-for-negotiations-with-us/


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## donp (Mar 5, 2006)

mr.c said:


> hope we grab on to it.... adios fidel.
> 
> _We take this opportunity to once again state that we are willing to resolve at the negotiating table the longstanding dispute between the United States and Cuba, of course, provided they accept, as we have previously said, our condition as a country that will not tolerate any blemishes on its independence, and as long as said resolution is based on the principles of equality, reciprocity, non-interference and mutual respect_
> 
> http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/fidel-no-show-raul-castro-calls-for-negotiations-with-us/


Seems to me it would be in their best interest to grab onto it, instead of the other way around. However, I see no reason "we" should interfere with their national situation and/or politics. National independence is a thing countries should all want, it is what defines the people in those countries. In a sense, it is freedom. Of course freedom is defined differently from person to person, place to place etc. But, nonetheless IMO, it is something to always aspire to.


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## adsantos13 (Oct 10, 2006)

The Cubans in Miami hold a lot of sway over US policy vis a vis Cuba. IMO, Raul Castro running the same regime will not change their opinion that the embargo should continue. 

Of course, this is just my opinion based on conversations with my wife's family and aquaintances (who are Cuban). The members of the family who believe the embargo should end ASAP (my wife, for one), are definitely in the minority.


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## beezer (Aug 29, 2006)

Does this mean Cubans will start to visit and never go back? Just be able to disappear here as illegal aliens? Just thinking outloud


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## Thurm15 (Jan 28, 2005)

adsantos13 said:


> The Cubans in Miami hold a lot of sway over US policy vis a vis Cuba. IMO, Raul Castro running the same regime will not change their opinion that the embargo should continue.
> 
> Of course, this is just my opinion based on conversations with my wife's family and aquaintances (who are Cuban). The members of the family who believe the embargo should end ASAP (my wife, for one), are definitely in the minority.


:tpd: From what I read, the Cubans and or their Descendents that had their property seized by the Castro Government and then fled want it back with interest. It doesn't look like Communist Cuba agrees.


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## ATLHARP (May 3, 2005)

donp said:


> Seems to me it would be in their best interest to grab onto it, instead of the other way around. However, I see no reason "we" should interfere with their national situation and/or politics. National independence is a thing countries should all want, it is what defines the people in those countries. In a sense, it is freedom. Of course freedom is defined differently from person to person, place to place etc. But, nonetheless IMO, it is something to always aspire to.


Well Cuba is in dire straits. They have an oppressive government which provides little to no opportunity for it's people. Their health care system is a mess and they now have no way to handle their infrastructure issues (Crumbling structures/buildings, and the lack of development and modernization of their own people). These things spell out a seriously bad situation for Cuba's future. This is set out there for the Cuban government to let the U.S. government know that they are ready to bargain upon Castro's death (or the revelation of his death). This is a tremendous step forward and should be taken seriously by our government.

Castro's government will ask for:
1. Immediate U.S. foreign aid
2. Cessation of the embargo
3. A Guarantee that the U.S. government will not interfere in their political transition.

The US Government will ask for:
1. Cuba's runuciation of the oil rights in the Gulf of Mexico.
2. Guarantees of political and journalistic freedom.
3. A promise to not have political and criminal retribution against those who are returning from exile or criminal flight.
4. Reparations to those who lost or had property unjustly seized from them.
5. Immediate release of Political prisoners held unjustly.

Now whether both sides will agree to this is another matter, but I will say no matter what happens, after the Rat Fidel croaks, it will be interesting.

ATL


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## luckybandit (Jul 9, 2006)

keep up these posts
thanks


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## donp (Mar 5, 2006)

ATLHARP said:


> Well Cuba is in dire straits. They have an oppressive government which provides little to no opportunity for it's people. Their health care system is a mess and they now have no way to handle their infrastructure issues (Crumbling structures/buildings, and the lack of development and modernization of their own people). These things spell out a seriously bad situation for Cuba's future. This is set out there for the Cuban government to let the U.S. government know that they are ready to bargain upon Castro's death (or the revelation of his death). This is a tremendous step forward and should be taken seriously by our government.
> 
> Castro's government will ask for:
> 1. Immediate U.S. foreign aid
> ...


Makes sense to me, and if it happens, it will make for high drama for years to come.


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## omowasu (Aug 9, 2006)

ATLHARP said:


> Well Cuba is in dire straits. They have an oppressive government which provides little to no opportunity for it's people. Their health care system is a mess and they now have no way to handle their infrastructure issues (Crumbling structures/buildings, and the lack of development and modernization of their own people). These things spell out a seriously bad situation for Cuba's future. This is set out there for the Cuban government to let the U.S. government know that they are ready to bargain upon Castro's death (or the revelation of his death). This is a tremendous step forward and should be taken seriously by our government.
> 
> Castro's government will ask for:
> 1. Immediate U.S. foreign aid
> ...


This is probably the best synopsis of what will happen if our government listens to Raul. In some wierd twisted way, many of the repatriations for siezed property will probably come from US aid in one way or another.


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## par (May 22, 2005)

I'm inclined to agree with ATL harp on the requirements but....

...if this is what US will demand and it's not subject for negotiation of longer term transition, then Raul will be steering the country into the arms of venezuela and hugo chavez. I think Raul realizes that this will be a bad thing but if backed into a wall i'm pretty sure this is where it will end up.

If US can trade off things like #4 and some aspects of #5 then perhaps there will be a dialogue but there is no chance that cuba is going to go and revise their history and say that nationalizing the private industry was wrong and that they can't send elements that are dangerous to the state to prison. Their reasoning will be that if China can have a political system with political prisoners and be most favoured nation to the united states then why can't Cuba have a similar system.


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## Legends of the Playground (Sep 29, 2006)

#4 is the biggest sticking point by far. And, IMO, the one that wont be solved.


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## Thurm15 (Jan 28, 2005)

I know this may sound simple but, I just don't understand how the US can have normal relations with former enemies that we never defeated like Russia and Vietnam but yet can't get a long with a little poor Island just 90 miles off its shores. I have to think there is something more to it than what we know. Frankly, it's just plain odd.


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## rick l (Apr 4, 2006)

I can't see the return of property to the Cubans that fled their homeland. The Jews that were in Auschwitz, Treblinka etc. that survived went home to nothing. The Germans , Czechs , Poles etc. would not even let them into their family homes, some are still fighting to get anything back. The Poles and other Eastern bloc nations just started fresh after the Iron Curtain fell. It was like your family history before WW11 never happened.
The biggest losers in the Cuban Agricultural Nationalisation were American Sugar interests, and thats not a big money crop anymore, so I can't see the American Gov. putting up much of a fight about repatriation. PS they have more Doctors per capita than any country in the world, they also have the HIGHEST LITERACY RATE IN THE WORLD. What has been holding them back is the punitive American Trade Laws.( Helms ,Burton ) it says if your company trades with Cuba you can't trade with us. But I somehow think China is getting around that. Rick


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## mr.c (Apr 8, 2004)

I think were Raul is steering cuba is not into a chavez like regime, they have had 50 years of that. I think it will be more like china, economic freedom but not political freedom. Dont expect this(the embargo) to be like the berlin wall where one day its there the next its not. One thing the u.s does not want is a mass exodus from cuba to miami. expatriot cubans will never get their land back.

before anything can happen, fidel needs to be at room tempture 1st. 

The embargo will end, sometime, I think this is the begining of the end.


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## donp (Mar 5, 2006)

Thurm15 said:


> I know this may sound simple but, I just don't understand how the US can have normal relations with former enemies that we never defeated like Russia and Vietnam but yet can't get a long with a little poor Island just 90 miles off its shores. I have to think there is something more to it than what we know. Frankly, it's just plain odd.


Because it is a little island just 90 miles off our shores. It is in our hemisphere and very close to us. Other enemies are at least half a world away.


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## TU09 (Mar 26, 2006)

mr.c said:


> expatriot cubans will never get their land back.


I think this is a very important fact that the Cuban community in the US will have a hard time coming to terms with under Raul. The return of property that was confiscated by the Cuban government is economically unreasonable but I suspect that the Cuban exile community will call for some form of reparations or return of property, which the Cuban government cannot afford. It will be interesting to see how the administration handles this situation; will we normalize relations and alienate an important S Florida voting demographic with the Cuban people actually benefiting or will we play to the demands of a small group of voters while the Cuban people continue to suffer and possibly driving Raul to ally himself with Chavez?

In any case, it looks as if US Cuban relations are going to be a topic of hot debate for some time to come. Personally, I'd really like to visit the island before a political transition to see for myself what it is really like since my current impressions are shaped by what ammounts to propaganda from both sides.


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## donp (Mar 5, 2006)

TuO:
A couple of thoughts occur to me:

Cuban Expatriates are still Cubans and most likely have family still there; I can't imagine the issue for many of the former landowners is simply getting their land back. I think they probably have always had the wellbeing of their native land on their minds. 
And, that voting block has become a helluva lot more sophisticated over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if their focus will be on economic issues which benefit their former homeland and their own communities.


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## ATLHARP (May 3, 2005)

par said:


> I'm inclined to agree with ATL harp on the requirements but....
> 
> ...if this is what US will demand and it's not subject for negotiation of longer term transition, then Raul will be steering the country into the arms of venezuela and hugo chavez. I think Raul realizes that this will be a bad thing but if backed into a wall i'm pretty sure this is where it will end up.
> 
> If US can trade off things like #4 and some aspects of #5 then perhaps there will be a dialogue but there is no chance that cuba is going to go and revise their history and say that nationalizing the private industry was wrong and that they can't send elements that are dangerous to the state to prison. Their reasoning will be that if China can have a political system with political prisoners and be most favoured nation to the united states then why can't Cuba have a similar system.


Agreed,

I think the U.S. will probably have to compromise more than Cuba on this (typically in these situations we do). The big issue is finacial aid. Cuba is dead broke and is earnestly trying to find ways in which to create some type of capital outside of Cigars and Sugar. I think much compromising will be done on both sides if any type of relationship is to exist in the future.

ATL


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## ATLHARP (May 3, 2005)

rick l said:


> I
> The biggest losers in the Cuban Agricultural Nationalisation were American Sugar interests, and thats not a big money crop anymore, so I can't see the American Gov. putting up much of a fight about repatriation. PS they have more Doctors per capita than any country in the world, they also have the HIGHEST LITERACY RATE IN THE WORLD. What has been holding them back is the punitive American Trade Laws.( Helms ,Burton ) it says if your company trades with Cuba you can't trade with us. But I somehow think China is getting around that. Rick


No not really,

1. Sugar is a massive multi billion dollar industry and Cuba opening up will cause serious ripples in the corporate world. Cuba can produce more sugar, cheaper than any place in the world period.

2. Cuba's statitics for health care are inflated and if it wasn't for aid sent by exiled Cubans themselves; those there would be dead from No medicine as opposed to a lack of medicine.

3. Cuba literacy rate is compiled from Cuban government statitics and are hardly valid when looking at rates of literacy. If the UN has compiled those figures I would like to know how they were compiled and were they done seperate from the Cuban Ministry of Information.

4. Cuba's long failing economy is from the statist and useless nature of socialism. Cuba went downhill long before the embargo took place. Also America is the only country still holding to the embargo and out of the 189 or 193 other countries in the world, why can't Cuba become more "global" and prosper with that tremendous amount of aid and good will from other fantastic socialist regimes?

I think I know why. because much like the slave labor camps of the Cold War (I.e. Russia, East Germany) many people (those that can actually read and still have the desire to be free) would leave at the first chance they could.

America is not the cause of Cuba's woes, it is the cure........despotism and cruel indifference by their leaders are what keep the cure from the people. :u

ATL


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## Legends of the Playground (Sep 29, 2006)

donp said:


> TuO:
> A couple of thoughts occur to me:
> 
> Cuban Expatriates are still Cubans and most likely have family still there; I can't imagine the issue for many of the former landowners is simply getting their land back. I think they probably have always had the wellbeing of their native land on their minds.
> And, that voting block has become a helluva lot more sophisticated over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if their focus will be on economic issues which benefit their former homeland and their own communities.


I really don't think that's the case.

If the expats really wanted to see Cuba prosper and free from authoritarian rule, they would have supported lifting the embargo and seeing us do what we did with Eastern Europe. How long did it take after the Iron Curtain fell for free market reforms and REAL elections to take hold there? Only a few years.

I don't have any personal facts to say this but I think this is ALL ABOUT getting the land/businesses back.


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## donp (Mar 5, 2006)

>>I don't have any personal facts to say this but I think this is ALL ABOUT getting the land/businesses back.<<

I don't either, and much of this discussion is conjecture on our parts anyway. But giving the land back to the expatriates certainly isn't what is on Raul's agenda, and while it may be the agenda for some expatriates, I don't believe the more successful expatriates would want to give up what they have struggled to regain in other parts of the world after 60 years, to go back into a system that is broke to hell and start all over again for a second time. I'm referring to the Padrons, and the Olivas and the Fuentes and the like, who have made their fortunes many times over, and who have come to call other places home.


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## a2vr6 (Oct 28, 2006)

ATLHARP said:


> No not really,
> 
> 1. Sugar is a massive multi billion dollar industry and Cuba opening up will cause serious ripples in the corporate world. Cuba can produce more sugar, cheaper than any place in the world period.
> 
> ...


I fully agree with your comments. When I visited Cuba a year ago, there was alot of Anti-American sentiment with everyone I spoke to. Another thing is alot of people in Cuba are actually brainwashed into thinking they are happy with the way things are.


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## par (May 22, 2005)

Economic trade with the US isn't exactly a guarantee for stability and prosperity either. There has to be some amount of desire or willpower from within. Look at Haiti, been given more than it's fair chances of prosperity and yet it's a banana republic with serious instability.


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## par (May 22, 2005)

a2vr6 said:


> I fully agree with your comments. When I visited Cuba a year ago, there was alot of Anti-American sentiment with everyone I spoke to. Another thing is alot of people in Cuba are actually brainwashed into thinking they are happy with the way things are.


That's communism for ya. Beat it down with a stick next time you see it!


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## donp (Mar 5, 2006)

par said:


> That's communism for ya. Beat it down with a stick next time you see it!


Yup, there will be a lot more to it than just throwing money at it.


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## TU09 (Mar 26, 2006)

ATLHARP said:


> 4. Cuba's long failing economy is from the statist and useless nature of socialism. Cuba went downhill long before the embargo took place. Also America is the only country still holding to the embargo and out of the 189 or 193 other countries in the world, why can't Cuba become more "global" and prosper with that tremendous amount of aid and good will from other fantastic socialist regimes?


That is a very interesting point. Why is it that Cuba's economy has struggled as it has with only the US enforcing an embargo? Why hasn't foreign tourism, for instance, taken hold and boosted the economy? Oil refining like many of their neighbors? Manufacturing like other economically depressed nations? Simply the inefficiencies of a state run economy or something more?


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## tecnorobo (Mar 29, 2005)

Just wanted to say this is the first _good_ thread I've read involving these things. Way to keep it civil everyone. This is how every thread that relates to government should be.


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## mosesbotbol (Sep 21, 2005)

par said:


> Economic trade with the US isn't exactly a guarantee for stability and prosperity either. There has to be some amount of desire or willpower from within. Look at Haiti, been given more than it's fair chances of prosperity and yet it's a banana republic with serious instability.


:tpd:

Cuba had problems before Castro, and is living in Haiti today "better" than living in Cuba today? That is a coin toss I do not want to be a part of...


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## M1903A1 (Jun 7, 2006)

TU09 said:


> That is a very interesting point. Why is it that Cuba's economy has struggled as it has with only the US enforcing an embargo? Why hasn't foreign tourism, for instance, taken hold and boosted the economy? Oil refining like many of their neighbors? Manufacturing like other economically depressed nations? Simply the inefficiencies of a state run economy or something more?


Because Cuba's government killed off and drove into exile thousands of its smartest and most capable citizens, spent thirty years hitched to the wagon of the Soviet Union (essentially being subsidized for years), and then was cut loose into the world with an industrial base that was obsolete and shopworn (socialist realism refusing to recognize productive limitations) and an entirely dispirited workforce. In essence, it dissipated its productive capital.

Not to mention autocratic regimes such as Castro's always end up with the same classist rules: A few at the top, el jefe and his retinue of subordinates and sycophantic lackeys, skimming off the national income and living off the best of everything, and everybody else below them on a bare subsistence and struggling to survive with little or no hope of getting ahead. Think of it as "neofeudalism". And except for that brief period of limited free enterprise and outside investment in the Nineties, it hasn't changed.


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## M1903A1 (Jun 7, 2006)

mosesbotbol said:


> :tpd:
> 
> Cuba had problems before Castro, and is living in Haiti today "better" than living in Cuba today? That is a coin toss I do not want to be a part of...


That coin toss would consistently land on its edge....:tg


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## M1903A1 (Jun 7, 2006)

TU09 said:


> I think this is a very important fact that the Cuban community in the US will have a hard time coming to terms with under Raul. The return of property that was confiscated by the Cuban government is economically unreasonable but I suspect that the Cuban exile community will call for some form of reparations or return of property, which the Cuban government cannot afford. It will be interesting to see how the administration handles this situation; will we normalize relations and alienate an important S Florida voting demographic with the Cuban people actually benefiting or will we play to the demands of a small group of voters while the Cuban people continue to suffer and possibly driving Raul to ally himself with Chavez?
> 
> In any case, it looks as if US Cuban relations are going to be a topic of hot debate for some time to come. Personally, I'd really like to visit the island before a political transition to see for myself what it is really like since my current impressions are shaped by what ammounts to propaganda from both sides.


To get to the original reason I was going to post...I think a lot of exiled Cubans (especially from the younger generations) have finally realized that what they left behind is no more, and don't want it back.


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